Samoans will have to start paying a hefty fee to fly on Samoa Air if they're overweight.

Samoa Air is the first airline to make customers pay as much as they weigh when flying on the airline. For overweight customers, this could mean big charges.

"This is the fairest way of travelling," said Chris Langton, chief executive of Samoa Air. "There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything – it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo."

Customers will have to start typing in their weight when purchasing Samoa Air tickets online, and pay anywhere from about $1 to about $4.16 per kilogram (depending on whether they're traveling short domestic routes or between Samoa and American Samoa).

Once arriving at the airport, the customers are weighed again to make sure they didn't lie online.

Why is Samoa Air doing this? According to Langton, it's partially meant to raise awareness of obesity and health, since Samoa is often in the top 10 lists for obesity.

"When you get into the Pacific, standard weight is substantially higher [than south-east Asia]," said Langton. "That's a health issue in some areas. [This payment system] has raised the awareness of weight."

The payment by weight system will have other benefits, such as safety measures where a plane can only handle so many overweight customers (larger passengers have to be evenly distributed on the plane for safety); families with young children could pay much less than what they're paying now, and carriers could gain the money lost on fuel for carrying heavier passengers.

Although it is a bit off topic i can not help replying as i somehow started it.

Planes are not developed to be kid friendly environments (just take a look around, i am sure we can agree on that). On top of that many parents can not handle their kids, especially in a non-adapted environment (ofcourse some can, but even then you can not predict or handle everything).

Loving kids or having them has nothing to do with it.

About the "right" to be there. It is discussable. It is the airline who makes the policy. If their businessmodel implies free kids on board or reduced costs to promote the parents to fly and buy tickets it is up to them. The right is entirely determined by the airline and the rest of the passengers who pay to fly with them (so support there policy). To bad for people like me as not many airline models support free of kids flights so i do not have the option to choose. Good for people like you who have kids and who want/"have" to take them onboard.

I do consider it my right and freedom to lobby for kid-free flights or kid-free zones. Which actually is a not so difficult to implement on some high frequented longhaul routes.

Thank you Malaysia airlines for exploring those options. And yes i fly with them when i can even if it means sometimes a bit paying more (non related to the fact if we should pay for that option).

Business class does not imply free of riff-raff as you call it. And i am not sure we should have to pay double or more to increase our chances on a "normal" flight. And ye if adults are annoying (drunk or other) occasionaly they do get thrown of the plane. It is about mutual respect.